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Topic: Pizza Stone heat loss after first pie (Read 2952 times)

I have an Old Stone Pizza stone that I preheat in a gas oven. Maximum temperature of the oven is 500 . After a one hour preheat the stone is at 600 in the center and about 550 around the 4 corners. The first pie takes about 9 - 10 minutes and the heat at the center of the stone is 480. I need to wait at least 10 minutes for the stone to recover. I was wondering if rather that one stone, two stones would help maintain the heat and prevent heat loss. Any suggestions?

I don't have a direct answer, but have been working on a similar problem myself. If the maximum temp in the oven is 500, I don't think adding another stone will be of much help, at best the air space it occupies will stay at 500 as opposed to dropping lower when outside air comes in when the door is open. I assume you are using the stone on the top rack, and using the broiler element to get the stone above the normal oven temp, if so, I don't think there is much you can do to get the second stone to a higher temp. Even if you are using the stone on the bottom rack and using the bake element, putting another stone on the rack above shouldn't get the lower stone to recover any quicker. Putting another one on top will be similar to a thicker stone with the hope it will retain more heat. Another option is to go to metal plate, which has a quicker recover time. I haven't done much experimenting, but have 1 inch corderite stones, ( in a 2 deck electric oven ) and also 1/2 " corderite stones, and I have been doing some tests on how much longer it takes to get the stones up to temp when using both 1/2 inch stones, versus both 1 inch stones. I know that the one inch stone loses temp pretty quick with the first pie ( about 650 for the first pie which cooks in about 3 1/2 minutes ) but has dropped below 500 by the time that pie is done. I haven't checked to see how long it takes to get back up to 600, but may start running tests to see how quick each one recovers.

The first pie takes about 9 - 10 minutes and the heat at the center of the stone is 480. I need to wait at least 10 minutes for the stone to recover.

I have a 3/4" thick stone 15" by 16" . I always allow at least 5 minutes for my stone to recover heat between pies. If your stone is thinner than mine, 10 minutes to recover sounds about right. Doubling up with cheap quary tiles or another stone should help. If you try it, please post back so we can see the results. Thanks!

If stacking 2 stones gives better results I imagine you could get even better results if the 2 stones were bonded together with Furnace Cement or Fireplace Mortar. However the big question is whether it's food safe to do that. I'm also concerned about the stones cracking due to one stone expanding or contracting at a different rate than the other during the pizza baking process.

scott123

Double the tiles translates into double the thermal mass. It will take longer to warm up, but once it is warm, twice the thermal mass will store twice the heat, baking your pizza a bit faster.

Thermal mass is good for trimming bake times- to an extent. If you've got a 2" hearth and add an inch to make it 3", that most likely won't trim your bake time much because of the time it takes for the heat to conduct it's way through the stone. But for quarry tiles- 1/4" or 1/2", more mass is better.

Assuming, of course, they sit flat. If you've got gaps between the stones, they won't conduct heat evenly and you'll have burned spots.

While it's encouraging that your oven gets so much hotter than the peak dial temp, 595 won't get you very far with quarry tiles. To get a good NY style bake time with quarry tiles, you've got to hit at least 650. For cordierite (Old Stone), you've got to hit at least 625.

595 will work well with other materials (such as steel plate), but a lot hinges on how much heat your broiler can pump out. Just to confirm, this is a gas oven with a broiling burner in the main compartment, correct? Does this oven have a convection feature?

The quarry tiles had ridges running along the bottom . This is a gas oven with convection. The broiler has a mind of its own. I mean If there is too much heat it won't turn on until the temps drop. Although when I ran the test with the quarry tiles I did turn it on and it stayed on. I' m thinking when baking a pie with just the 1 pizza stone, to turn on broiler after I take out pie to recover heat .

That's only half the data. The problem you are trying to solve is HEAT LOSS. Therefore, you'd need to bake a pie, remove it and measure temperature immediately. Then measure again every 5 minutes until it came back to temperature. If you bonded the tiles togther, I believe you'd see the 2 tile system heat up faster and ultimately hotter at the 60 minute point.

The ultimate test is baking the pie with the 2 tile system. Did you see any difference?

I did try to do some testing on heat loss and recovery time, but decided I would not be able to do anything that would really answer the question, the only answer I got was to a question I never asked. I have an older version of a Bakers Pride P18 2 decks, 110 volt, 3 elements, but only one thermostat and no way to turn off individual elements. Original equipment is 1/2 " stones, and I bought 1 inch corderite kiln shelves that I cut to fit. On the top deck I put a temp sensor, then the 1/2 " stone, then the 1 inch stone, on the bottom deck I put just a 1 inch stone - so the upper deck has 50% more stone. I heated it up till the lower sensor and the ir temp on the top of the top stone were as close as they could get ( 680 below the 1/2 stone and 690 on the top of the 1 inch stone.) then I loaded an aluminum pie pan with 1 or 2 ice cubes on it, and closed the door and let it stay for 3 minutes, then took out the pan, then checked the ir on the top of the stone every 3 minutes until it recovered, and monitored the temp at the bottom of the stone which never moved. The first time it dropped about 50 degrees on top of the stone, and recovered 45 degrees in 6 minutes. The second time, ( 2 ice cubes ) it dropped 110 degrees and took 9 minutes to climb back to within 5 degrees of starting temp. When I did the test on the lower deck, it dropped 110 degrees and took 9 minutes to recover. I was going to repeat it a few more times, but realized there were too many differences. First, the lower stone never gets as hot as the upper deck, second, the lower stone was 1/2" further from the upper element than the upper stone so wouldn't get the some heat from above as the upper stone. The best way to deal with both would be to use pieces of kiln shelf to elevate both the top and bottom stones of the racks so they were the same distance from the upper elements, but then they would be different distances from the bottom elements. I also realized that the temp drop would depend, in part on exactly how dry I got the pan between tests, the size of the ice cubes, and whether they stayed close together, or drifted once the pan was in the oven. The one positive conclusion was that when you use a wooden peel to take the aluminum pan out of the oven it will be about 500 degrees, and if you leave it on the peel for a few minutes while you check the temps in the oven, and use the ir on the stones, then write all that down and a few minutes later go back to the peel you will find one or more of the following : burn mark from the pan, glue failure because it got so hot, and shrinkage from drying out the wood - if you are lucky and get all three, you will have more of a comb of separate pieces at the front, and one solid glued shape at the rear - though I have several extra peels so no real loss.

I was going to measure the drop in temp when making pies on Sunday, but I had a colossal failure - it turns out a stromboli works because there is dough on the top and bottom. If instead, you cook a pizza 1 1/2 minutes with a stone around 700 and you try to take it out to turn it around, and instead it develops a hole, and the cheese gets stuck on the peel and causes the pie to fold over on itself - it generally ( well I only tried it once, but I still feel comfortable in this prediction ) won't fold over exactly in half like a stromboli, and instead a part of the cheese topping and sauce from the pie will fall upside down directly on the stone, which I did mention was about 700 degrees, and at that point, you can try to get as much of it on the peel as you want, but the only real things to do is turn on the kitchen exhaust fan, and start taking batteries out of smoke alarms - since it takes a long time for 1 1/2 inches of cordierite to cool down.

Finally, to the question of the stone getting hotter than the oven, I assume the broil element is hotter than the oven and am no expert, but would guess radiant heat would get it closer to the temp of the element than the surrounding air.

My 3/4 inch stone takes about 10 minutes to recover. Most of the time that is fine. However, if I have a big party, I want to pump pizzas out faster. My typical setup is to put the stone on the very top rack and heat with the bottom element. I have my oven rigged to stay on as long as I want, so I heat my stone to 650 F. It takes about an hour to heat up. I have a small, half moon peice of aluminum foil on the back of my stone which seems to help balance out the heat. I still have to turn the pizza at about 3 minutes for even baking. I make about three pizzas for my family, each ten minutes apart, which works fine for us.

When I have a large group over, however, I use 4 standard sized bricks. I arrange them on a middle rack in a horseshoe shape at the front of the oven. This has 3 effects. 1. The oven takes 2.5 hours to heat up. 2. The pizza bakes more evenly. I still have to spin it, but I can wait longer and overall, the pie cooks more evenly. 3. The recovery time is cut to about 6 minutes.

The only reason I don't do the bricks every time is the expense of running the oven that long, and the advance work it takes (most times I make pizza on weekdays, making the dough the night before and having my wife take it to rise while I am still at work.

I know this isn't exactly what you asked for, but I hope it's helpfull anyways.

If the maximum temperature of your oven is 500, how does your stone get to 600?

The MAX temp in the oven is controlled with a thermocouple usually located mid-way or towards the top of the oven wall. The heat is generated at the bottom of the oven or both the top and bottom. This means the heat is more intense the closer you get to the heat source. In other words, the ambient oven temp might be controlled at 500 deg but the stone might actually much hotter if it's located on the oven floor very close to the heat source. This is why it's best to have a oven thermometer located on a middle shelf and also have a hand held IR Thermometer to check the temp of the stone.